One Question Friday: How Do You Keep Your Imagination Alive?

hubspot allows all our teams to work together seamlessly so no one's falling overboard unless we want them to okay it's sean and i'm here with one question friday where we take one listener question and we play the audio on air and then we try to answer we try to drop a knowledge bump right i'm already imagining you listening to this and your mind is your mind is blown the brain is leaking out the air and that's that's how you're gonna end this podcast okay so let's go ahead and listen as ben has sent me three audio i can pick any one of the three haven't heard it yet i'm going to pick door number one let's go hey guys my name is matthew and i have a question for sean so he talks about not wanting to be in the imagination graveyard what are some tips and tricks that you do to keep your imagination creativity alive especially when you feel stuck or you don't know what to do oh okay perfect this is right up my alley and let me break this down for you in three parts i'll i'll first start by saying this i think this question touches on something a tactic that is one of the most useful things that i do that i don't really hear anybody else talking about okay so that's the that's the teaser which is what i'm about to talk about is one of the most useful things to me and i rarely hear people talking about it so let's break this into parts you you're asking about imagination if this great little phrase imagination graveyard i don't think i said that but i'm stealing it from you so the first thing is if i said alright picture somebody who's got an amazing imagination right who who in the world has an amazing imagination often what people will think about is a child right so when we're kids we get praise for our imagination and we're always plant making up games and stories and magical creatures and imaginary friends and all this good stuff so that's the first place we go we think kids imagination is for kids the other place we go is maybe like a i don't know like somebody who works at pixar like oh you're super creative you create these movies of stories so you need to be imaginative and the rest of us we don't really need that and i think that's totally wrong so i actually will put this forward i think that everybody is using their imagination every day but you just don't recognize it because when you're a kid your imagination is about fun and possibilities and magical fantasy lands and when you're an adult your imagination is actually manifest as stress alright okay so what don't what does that mean you wake up and you're you look through the alarm clock you see the time and immediately you realize that oh man i'm i'm gonna be stuck in traffic right so where is your brain gone your brain has imagined a situation that hasn't happened that is not necessarily a fact or proven but you're imagining that the the either the the roads are gonna be clogged or the airport gonna be busy or they're gonna lose my bag or you imagine that oh i have this presentation and i'm gonna i'm gonna f it up right i'm gonna stumble on my words or i'm gonna get nervous or people aren't gonna get it or people are gonna laugh at me whatever we are constantly imagining negative scenarios happening this is very common in adults right and you know how do you feel when you imagine these things right you feel anxious you feel stressed you feel depressed these are all code words for the same thing fear and fear only takes place in the imagination and so the first thing recognize that imagination is not just something that kids do is something that adults do all the time they just code name it stress and that's because they are imagining bad scenarios that haven't happened yet that might this happens as a parent you watch your kid and instead of being you know marvel at how old they're playing you are imagining hope they might hit their head on that thing right hope they might stub their toe over here right how often do we do things like that okay so that's step one now the second thing is okay well what's the big deal we're imagining this well what's the implication what is the result of this imagination well the first is how you feel because when you imagine something going poorly you feel stressed an anxious you know depressed sad whatever are these negative emotions or emotions that we usually don't wanna experience for an extended period of time so it changes our mood but it also changes our decisions right if you imagine that you're you know gonna be stuck in traffic maybe you'll leave earlier it'll take a different route router or maybe you won't go at all same thing with your imagine that the presentation is gonna be you're gonna forget what you had to say and you're the people are gonna be looking at you like you don't know what you're talking about so maybe you'll actually just ask somebody else to do it or you'll you'll avoid the situation altogether so imagination drives not just your mood but your decisions so what i mean if at the beginning of this if i said how important is your imagination say yeah it's yeah it's important to have an imagination but your mood and your decisions are like the most two most important things that you have in life and what i'm telling you is that they're driven by your imagination about what you're imagining the future to be like and so all of a sudden imagination becomes this pretty important thing and the problem is imagination is a muscle that we haven't used consciously since we were kids right like we're always doing it in the background but how often are we actually intentionally trying to improve our imagination it is a muscle that's just been weakening and at atrophy since we were like you know five years old and so here's how i do it okay so that's the importance of it now okay what do you actually do about that well the way that most people in my friend group my peers the way they think is extremely rational analytical logical and they love lists like nobody loves lists like a business person and a do an achieve they love lists right you you know write right down knock it off and those do work to a certain extent they actually work at on getting a pretty good result but they get there in the sort of like toughest most stressful way possible and i'm not really interested in that right like i wanna win and i wanna enjoy it while i go to me those are two non negotiable things not willing to lose and not willing to have this you know rough tough it out experience no i wanna have an enjoyable awesome experience while i'm doing it so that's just the way i've chosen to live my life okay so now what i do differently instead of making a list which is like a text format i use the brain the way the brain actually works which is a brain is more visual system and it's a visual auditory system and so i use my brain when i think about what i wanna do with my tasks my goals stuff like that i don't make lists i make scenes like scenes in a movie so i'm imagining how i want something to go and i think i even started this podcast saying something like i think i think i said i'm imagining you listening to this with your mind blown and your brain leaking right like i think i literally said that at the beginning of this podcast that is how i approach anything so people are like you know hey you do a lot of public speaking you know what's a tip to get better and this is what i was say i don't think about what you need to say first start by imagining the reaction at the end how are people gonna feel and react at the end you imagine the standing ovation you imagine i i do this for example i imagine when i teach my class on zoom this is like i teach a course people pay a thousand dollars per person to get into this course and they show up in a zoom and i need to make this thing lit it can't feel like a boring meeting i don't worry about what words i'm gonna say i worry i think about how do i want this to end what don't how do i want this to feel at the end here and what i always do is i imagine the chat in a zoom chat flooding with comments people being like this was a twelve out of ten oh my god so many nuggets of gold dude so glad i came you know i'm imagining these almost like con con conversations that are happening at the end i imagine the volume of chat just flying through the screen of positive feedback that gets me in a certain type of mood right that gives me that confidence that then i could just go and i can just operate naturally in the who knows the right words just happened to come out of my mouth then because i'm from the right state of mind so what i'll do is i'll make scenes for my goals so instead of saying i will i wanna lose ten pounds i will imagine look myself in the mirror and seeing what i right i'll imagine the scene of looking at my body or even better forget the body i imagined that i just posted my before and after on twitter and i'm seeing the replies flood in right so i'm using my own psychology to my advantage my psychology wants to get a bunch of likes and comments on social media i use that to my advantage i imagine that scene going the way i want if it's happens to be with fine finances or success i imagine you know a scene of that success so i don't have to worry about how i get there so i just wanna know what it feels like when i'm already there and so here's some tips in doing this i have a scene what i do is i have a scene for all the different things that matter to me in my life i have a scene for let's say my family for example i don't really share this most people but you know family is super important to me and so i imagine the scene of me walking into my house and you know like as a kid you run up to your parent and you like cling onto their leg like like a little koala so i already imagined one kid on one leg one another kid on the other leg and then one kid at koala on my arm and then me leaning over to kiss my wife right that's the scene that implies a house full of love right so that is i sort of imagined the happy ending at the end and that's my scene that i go to that puts me in a certain mood that gives me clarity of what i want and then once i have a great mood and great clarity of what i want i tend to just make the right decisions along the way right i'm operating from a place of abundance instead of a place of feeling like i'm lacking something and then i make shitty decisions because my you never wanna make decisions from panic or fear or feeling desperate or a lack because you're gonna make a certain type of decision i wanna make decisions from feeling good feeling confident imagining all the possibilities and i wanna make decisions that will lead me into that into that outcome okay so i'll leave you with a couple tips on if you actually wanna go do this take your goal that you've written down instead imagine it as a movie scene like a like a movie scene it's not just what you see it's what you hear it's the it's all your senses try to use as many of your senses as possible so what do you hear what do you see how does it smell how does it feel to be wearing those clothes to be sitting in that car to be sitting in that chair to be sleeping in that bed right try to gauge all five senses it makes it more vivid for you the other thing is make it comic right so a movie can be a horror movie a drama movie i know for me i choose comedy and so when i imagine something i imagine almost the most extreme version of that because it makes me laugh it takes a lot of the weight off my shoulders things feel really important and tight when you are kind of afraid of them but what you play with the idea in your head you play with that scene it becomes lightweight and then i like to operate from a place of something being lightweight and so that's how i do it that's how i use my imagination on really a daily basis and it becomes a practice and i wanna practice my imagination more than i did as a kid when i used to make up you know little stories with my figurines my toys or you know when i used to draw on sketch and do things like that i used to work that muscle a out a lot back then what i realized is you gotta do that as an adult too because your imagination is always running and it's just what is it that what is it running on autopilot by default it's kind of gonna imagine stressful possible negative outcomes that that tends to be where we go as adult and i don't wanna fall into that path right that's common i'd like to go uncommon and so the uncommon path is to actually train that muscle practice imagining things that you want that puts you in the right mood and that lakes lets you make decisions from from a place of you know from a place of winning rather than fear of losing alright so that's it hope that answers your question and i'll see you guys next friday